This Is a Public Service Announcement — With Vaginas!

A few months ago, I got interviewed by a journalist for the local paper about this website, and she asked me WTF I was talking about when I said it’s a third-wave feminist blog. I answered her question as best I could at the time, but today I was reminded of why I felt so strongly about it in the first place. I happened to read this article on Salon.com, and it’s totally an example what today’s sex-positive fashion blogger is up against.

It’s called “Your ‘Orgasm Face’?: Cosmo and the Pornification of Women.” Basically, a certain “Amy Tuteur” rails against today’s modern culture of “increasing sexual openness,” on the grounds that it is a “bonanza for men” but not any fun for women. I have not had a chance to look at the Cosmopolitan article to which this piece refers; my extensive schedule of reading, writing letters, hunting for old curios, and vigorous Socratic debate sometimes precludes my reading influential Cosmo pieces in as timely a fashion as I would like. Nevertheless, I take strong exception to this argument (Tuteur’s, not the orgasm-face one), and would like to register my disagreement in as firm an manner as possible. For example, there’s this:

Men get all the benefits; women carry all the risks. Men get laid, get action, get lucky and women get pregnant, get sexually transmitted diseases, get infertile, get cervical cancer.

Where to begin, in this farrago of unwarranted assumptions and logical fallacies? Setting aside the question of what sort of freaky sex act makes you pregnant and infertile, at the same time, — the whole premise of today’s dissolute culture is that women, not just men, enjoy having sex. When a dude and a woman have sex, both of them are getting laid, not just one. Both of them could write in to my website and tell me about it, especially if they were wearing cute outfits. Does this “Amy Tuteur” believe that women have been pretending this entire time (since the 60s and 70s — even earlier in the case of your mom {because she’s old, and a slut}) that they like getting fucked; whereas really, it is a ruse to appease the patriarchy? Alternately, perhaps they think they like fucking, but really don’t. Well, that’s kind of condescending, Amy Tuteur. (This woman, incidentally, is a gynecologist. I would hate to have a gynecologist that judgmental; my gyno is a fun lady, who once told me about how she treated her undereye bags using prescription hemorrhoid cream.)

The most puzzling bit is the following:

{Pornography is bad, etc. etc.}, and all in exchange for what? Young men are almost always sexually satisfied by their relationships. Young women? Not so much … because young men are often inexperienced lovers more concerned about their own enjoyment than anything else.”

Well jeez, how are they ever going to get any better? The whole point of young dudes is that they fuck a lot of women, and eventually they get good at it. That is what they are here for. If everybody refused to fuck them (for fear of being “pornified”), they would never learn how to please a woman. (Sorry to be so heteronormative, but Tuteur doesn’t have anything to say about queer people and their problems.) In the aggregate, if lots of people go out and have casual sex, progress is made. That’s why if you fuck a young guy — even if it ends up not being that great — you are making a contribution.

Look, America. If we want to solve the terrible problem of inexperienced, inept young men, we’ve all got to work together. Teaching young people the skills and techniques they need to succeed in the twenty-first century is a goal that involves all of us — that needs the contributions of people like you, but is also so much bigger than any one individual. But it won’t always be easy. (Unlike your mom.) Sometimes the task will be intensely humiliating, painful, or even bloody. There will be times when you are too numbed up on coke to feel anything, or too drunk to remember your partner’s name. You must persevere, Americans. In the end, you will be proud of yourself, because you were on the right side of history. A story I heard recently proves this to be true.

This takes place about two years ago, when “Naomi” was a model living in New York. One night she was drunk at a rooftop party on the Lower East Side; apparently the building had a great view, because my notes say “downtown, lights, awesome.” She was wearing black cutoff shorts, made from a pair of old jeans that had shrunk in the wash, and a pair of flat leather boots that used to belong to an old roommate. She had stolen dozens of this woman’s items over time, by borrowing them and not returning them, which was fair because all of them “looked better” on her.

Black denim cutoff shorts

Loeffler Randall boot

The boots that follow are only tangentially relevant, but it’s boot season! Everyone wants suggestions on hot new boots! Also, I spent a lot of time researching flat leather boots.

Coclico boots

Frye riding boot

Hayden-Harnett just sent me an e-mail about these boots, with the ridiculous subject line “Hayden-Harnett’s Leather Booty Call of Love.”

Hayden Harnett riding boot

Somehow, Naomi ended up talking to “Tyler.” What did they talk about? “I don’t remember.” Whatever it was, it must have held her interest, because they decided to go back to his place. He was house-sitting for a friend who also lived on the lower East Side, so that’s where they went.

Was Tyler hot? She was “so wasted, it wasn’t gonna matter.” Also, “coke was probably involved.” Thus, the tragic irony of hedonism: If you are too avid in your pursuit of pleasure, you end up unable to enjoy anything. Always use cocaine responsibly. At his house, “we totally had sex,” but “I remember nothing.” Presumably they went to sleep. “When I woke up,” continues Naomi, “there was blood all over the sheets.”

She was furious when she discovered this: “Did I just get my fuckin’ friend?” We all know that the monthly cycle is a miracle of nature, and puts a womyn’s body in tune with the phases of the moon, but Naomi didn’t care about any of that. She wanted no part of nature and its cycles; she was embarrassed, and worried that “he thinks I’m crazy” for bleeding all over his friend’s bed. They had the following conversation:

“Did you get your period?”

“Oh, fuck it.”

She investigated the matter, but found nothing. (Fun fact for men: The way you check whether you’re having your period is, you stick a finger up your vagina. You can’t learn that from fuckin’ Salon.com, can you??) Naomi went to the bathroom and discovered the source of the blood. When she was up on the roof, she must fallen and skinned her knees without noticing it. When they got in that night, “my knees were gushing blood.” They were fucking doggy-style, and that’s how it got all over the sheets. “I didn’t realize it because I was fucking wasted.”

Obviously, Naomi has forgotten almost everything about this incident, but it ended up being memorable in one way: “I still have the scars.”

10 Responses to “This Is a Public Service Announcement — With Vaginas!”

I think this piece conveys the right attitude- if younger women don’t drink and take younger sexually ineffectual males home, how will they learn? Does anyone think the entire female population is going to stand a chance of getting their sexual needs gratified by the very few men who come out of puberty sexually astute? I think not.
Women, by teaching the younger men now, you are not only engaging in a symbiotic like arrangement in the present, but are benefiting all of womankind by improving the sexual know how and aptitude of a population who would generally be lackluster otherwise.
Use cocaine responsibly. This is not to be underestimated.
The ‘Amy Tuteur’ noted in the above article should spend less time hating on sexual interaction and more time warning women about the blood-thinning effects of alcohol.
Drunk women get bruised a lot during sex.. and in the case of poor poor Naomi, who must have had a several too many- stumbling and falling, thus breaching her knee’s skin integrity came with embarassing results. I am happy to know that bloodied knees did not prevent her from fucking doggy style. She is a champion–praise and laudation should be heaped upon her pseudonym.

That reminds me. I wore an all white get up a few weeks back. Pants, shirt, and jacket. I added a woolen tie of baby blue. I think the tie got me laid.. go figure.
Thoughts on the tie?

I think the only explanation for people like Amy Tuteur is that they hate sex SO MUCH that they cannot possibly imagine anyone else enjoying it– but I still haven’t worked out the part in which they believe all men, but no women, enjoy it. And you’re absolutely right that the best way to encourage young men to become good at sex and learn to please women is to fuck them more. You just forgot the important detail in which women need to tell men what to do if they’re doing it wrong.

I agree that Amy Teuteur’s making a tremendous assumption that women don’t enjoy sex too. And to invert your argument, just as dudes will never learn how to be a good lay unless you take them home, you’ll never know what you like until you try different things with different people. Doesn’t Amy Teuteur care about women’s pleasure? Or, to her, admitting that as a woman you enjoy sex is tantamount to admitting you’re a giant whore?

I apologize for my lack of pictures and general ignorance concerning the mechanics of how this works. I post pictures of my white get up? I think i might enjoy thoughts and feedback.
Would someone be so good as to enlighten me?

I don’t want to defend Amy Tuteur’s knee-jerk reaction to the “orgasm face article”. Personally I’d rather read someone’s ponderings about something as psychological and juicy as “What he is thinking when he watches you come” than I would read about which outfits are more slimming or any of the other “conformity is sexy” articles that fill up magazines like Cosmo. As some one who has had, and enjoyed a lot of attached and unattached sex I think that hard to pin down questions like “what is he thinking when we are fucking” are the things that keep you coming back for more- not just another example of “The idea that women exist solely for the sexual satisfaction of men”. The fact that Amy so quickly jumps to this conclusion is just a sad indicator of her own discomfort with the intimacy and play involved in sex.

However, I think it is short sighted and naive to ignore that the sexual liberation of women in the form of promiscuity-no matter the obvious benefits to women’s sex lives- sometimes comes back and bites us in the ass. How many girlfriends do we all have that spend months recovering from the emotional fallout of what was supposed to have been a casual encounter? Okay it works both ways; both girls and boys can be casualties of the laws of unequal attraction. But, let’s be real ladies, guys are a lot better and more inclined to draw lines between emotions and sex. Few women can do it all the time, and even fewer actually want to.

Then there is the little inconvenience of biology. No guy is ever going to be faced with the fact of pregnancy after a one-night stand. I would bet that usually the guy doesn’t ever have to face the consequence of that little roll in the hay, but as women, there is no escape. Even if she decides to have it and tells him about it- many fathers of unwanted children are perfectly happy to be deadbeat dads. Motherhood is a lot harder to shrink away from.

I also know a lot of my older girlfriend start getting increasingly desperate as they move through their 30s. Sure casual sex is fun filler, but at some foggy point in the future a lot of us really do want to be in love and have some sort of dynamic, loving, super-human modern relationship. Meanwhile, the guy you would love to be in love with can’t quite wipe the stupid grin off his face from the one-night stand he had the night before with the daring 22 year-old who thought it was empowering to flash her tits on the dance floor.

In this way don’t you think Amy Tutuer has at least half a point? Sure, as modern women we can and do enjoy sex for sex’s sake But if men are more naturally inclined to be 100% satisfied with “just sex” in some way aren’t we shooting the rest of the female population and our future selves in the foot by giving it all up so god damn soon?

I can’t imagine loving to be in love with someone who wants to be with someone else just because she flashes her tits at him. Don’t people want a bit more substance in a relationship?

I also wish we were seeing the actual outfit that worked for a particular person instead of a bunch of google images searches. I’d send you a picture of what I wore but these days I’m only getting lucky with my old man and he’ll do me in anything, which kind of negates the purpose of this site.